Let's set the scene.
A group of armed men storm a federal building wearing camouflage and openly defying the U.S. government. They say they're willing to use violent force if confronted. They oppose how their brethren are being treated. Some even question the legitimacy of the U.S. government.
That's what's going on in Burns, Oregon ever since January 2, when a group of men that had been part of a protest over the upcoming imprisonment of two ranchers convicted of arson decided to take the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and call for like-minded people to join them.
Impromptu passionate activism that went a little too far? Not quite. Members of the Bundy family, best known for an armed standoff with the government in early 2014, are among them.
Just what should you call a bunch of white guys with guns that take over a government building? Leave it to the New Yorker to sum up the first media controversy of 2016.
Today's cartoon gets at the marketing problem in Oregon. https://t.co/MZSewViVTD pic.twitter.com/SMLyHIx6QK— Nicholas Thompson (@nxthompson) January 4, 2016
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," goes the now famous quote from Gerald Seymour's 1975 novel Harry's Game. It's a notion that is particularly applicable to this situation and the way it is being characterized by the media.
A quick perusal finds
[seealso slug=http://sale-online.click/2016/01/03/who-are-the-militants-in-oregon/%5D%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3EThose labels seem to dance around the idea that a group of people seeking to opposed the government by force -- particularly to make a political point -- would classically be labeled as terrorists.
Some publications had published op-eds that say as such, but most mainstream coverage did not reflect that sentiment.
Here's how the major national media outlets are describing the Oregon gunmen. https://t.co/5gK1dzPvZ4 pic.twitter.com/Islty0cgew— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) January 4, 2016
Tom Kent, standards editor at the Associated Press, said that the AP's word choice has more to do with accuracy than political characterization.
"In breaking news, our goals are speed and accuracy and precision," he said. "So if armed ranchers take over a federal building, then the most direct and specific term is armed ranchers, and that's what we used."
As far as using the term "terrorist," Kent noted that the word did not tell readers much about what was actually happening, and therefore wasn't used in this case.
"We use specific terms, so a term like terrorist is a very nonspecific term," he said.
That makes sense for the AP, but what about left-leaning outlets that might want to make a point? In this case, even websites such a Talking Points Memo and Slate opted for the "militia" tag.
Meanwhile, conservative-leaning media aren't all that different, calling them "occupiers" and "armed protestors," albeit with a bit more sympathy for the group.
fox news is literally not sure if the armed thugs occupying a federal building are good or bad pic.twitter.com/1ExRhLe0WU— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) January 4, 2016
The notion of just who is and isn't a terrorist -- or is at least called a terrorist in the media -- has become something of a symbolic argument around how U.S. culture and policy tends to discriminate against minority groups. This become notable around mass shootings at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and an office in San Bernardino.
In Charleston and Colorado Springs, white shooters were motivated individually by race and abortion, generating some discussion about whether they should be referred to as terrorists.
The shooters in San Bernardino, Muslims who had been radicalized, were called terrorists with little hesitation,
Why isn't law enforcement doing anything about the terrorists in Oregon? If they were Muslim would they be treated the same? #doublestandard— Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) January 5, 2016
The tensions between who is and isn't a terrorist, particularly with regard to non-white or non-U.S. citizens is particularly dissonant in the face of data that has shown domestic terrorism has claimed more U.S. lives since 9/11 than jihadists.
Part of the problem, however, is in what is and isn't labeled terrorism, making the entire issue hard to brush off as semantics.
Endless media debates over who is a "terrorist" shows how empty/malleable the term is: amazing given how central the word is to law & policy— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 4, 2016
The media might have been slow to use the terrorist label on the armed men in Oregon, but plenty on social media weren't. Whimsical hashtags quickly emerged such as #YallQaeda, #YeeHawdists and #YokelHaram.